Free The Rising (The Alchemy Wars) by Ian Tregillis Page B

immediately behind the carriage. Not a silent darkness, however—a faint but unmistakable
tickticktocktock
punctuated the wind. A cold wind at that; she’d been cozy enough to sweat inside the carriage, and now she had to fight her body’s desire to shiver. Shivering made her muscles ache.
    “Sparks,” she said as quietly as she could manage, “where are we?”
    From the darkness behind the carriage, the servitor said, “On the road to New Amsterdam, mistress. We have momentarily stopped. How may I attend to your comfort?”
    “Why have we stopped? Is there an inn nearby?”
    “No, mistress.”
    “You know this road well.”
    “Yes, mistress.”
    Of course you do. You guard the packages and correspondence that pass to and from the house I’ve fled.
    “Where is our driver?”
    “Mr. Cortland converses with his counterpart in the other carriage, mistress. Shall I call him for you?”
    Other carriage?
She eased outside, closed the door so the light wouldn’t give her away, and crept behind the carriage. Sparkshadn’t budged from his perch atop the mail trunk. She knelt in the snowy roadbed, behind the wheels, and peered through the shifting forest of horse legs to a pool of light perhaps twenty or thirty yards away. The light, she realized, came from two lamps. The driver had taken a lamp from atop the carriage and walked out to meet the oncoming vehicle.
    Strange that he didn’t wait until they passed one another on the road to have a chat. Unless he didn’t want Berenice, or Sparks, to hear what he had to say.
    “I take it he ordered you to watch over me while he speaks with the other carriage.”
    “Correct, mistress.”
    Shit. He’s suspicious. And he doesn’t trust Sparks, either. Because Sparks isn’t Cortland’s servant, but the Guild’s.
    The question now was whether Sparks could serve her.
    Berenice plucked the pendant from around her neck. Carefully collecting her thoughts, she stood, wobbled, wrapped the chain about her fist, and then thrust the rosy cross at Sparks.
    “What is your true name, machine?”
    The servitor’s posture changed just enough to coax a creak from the carriage suspension.
    “My makers call me Sparthikulothistrodantus, mistress.”
    She ransacked her memory, trying to produce a transcript of something mentioned only once and in passing. If their driver returned before she finished, he might interfere. He could even prevent this. She glanced up the road again; one of the lights was moving. What had Jax said? How had Visser phrased it when he flashed the Empire’s Seal? Well, fuck it. She’d have to wing it.
    “I represent the Verderer’s Office of the Sacred Guild of Horologists and Alchemists,” she said. The carriage creaked again, as though the servitor had stiffened or shifted its weight. Berenice took a steadying breath before plunging forward. Ifshe bungled this, the machine would react badly. “My work supersedes all domestic and commercial geasa, as it is the highest work of the empire. I invoke this power to negate your lease and therefore sever all prior geasa not formed in the direct service of my goals.” The damned Clakker gave no indication of having been changed. She asked, “Do you understand?”
    Uncharacteristically for a mechanical, it didn’t respond immediately. When Sparks did answer, its voice was strained and tremulous. The incessant tattoo of its mainspring heart had changed, too, as though it now beat to a subtly different rhythm. “Yes, mistress. I am no longer seconded to the Royal Mail service and Mr. Cortland. I am now solely an instrument of you and the Verderer’s Office. How may I serve you?”
    Berenice’s stomach curdled. She coughed on something sour. Talleyrand wasn’t one to shrink from dirty work, but there was political maneuvering, there was intelligence gathering, there was even war—and then there was murder. Many people had died as an indirect result of her choices and actions when she’d been Talleyrand, more